Keepsakes
by Alex Foster
Summary: Inside she stored reminders of the things that she loved. First friend, first kiss. Two items in the box. Perhaps not the most exciting of all lives, but it was a start.


Title: Keepsakes

Author: Alex Foster

Category: Kim/Ron...ish

Rating: PG

Summary: Inside she stored reminders of the things that she loved. First friend, first kiss. Two items in the box. Perhaps not the most exciting of all lives, but it was a start.

Disclaimer: Disney owns and controls the world. I only play.

Author's Notes: A post-ep for Emotional Sickness...because I don't think one can watch and write Kim Possible without doing one. Enjoy.

_All my possessions for a moment of time._

Elizabeth I, English Queen 1558 - 1603 (1533 - 1603)

She kept it in a shoebox underneath her bed. On one hand she could count the number of times she opened the box and withdrew its hidden treasure. Each time, there was something to remember. Little things, kid things, whose importance grew along with her.

The first time she'd seen the treasure was when she was six-years-old. It was a birthday gift from Nana Possible. An odd gift for one so young, perhaps, but Nana knew the memories would start early. Nana had smiled and said she received one when she was the same age.

Inside the shoebox was another box. Masterfully designed from pine, it was a square box with hand carved vines and leaves twisting along the sides. Two vines came together on the lid and marked a golden lock.

It was an old style lock opened with a heavy iron key straight out of the fairy tales she loved when she was little. For a long time she would sit on her bed, box held carefully on her lap, and play with the seemingly magical lock. The feel of the thick metal key in her tiny hand, the two slight clicks the key made as it slipped into place, and sudden snap of the tumblers being thrown thrilled her.

It was one of the best gifts little Kimmie Possible ever received.

That, Nana had said, was the point of the box: gifts. There she would store all of the important gifts and things in her life that shaped her, that changed her. It was a record of the things she valued.

The first prize she selected to go into the box was a comb. A little pink comb that belonged to Miss Beasley, Kim's favorite doll. With that little pink comb she would style Miss Beasley's hair and discuss highly important things in the seven-year-old's life.

One day Miss Beasley got lost. The Possibles turned their residence upside down but she was gone. Kimmie cried and cried. Why had her best friend run away?

That night, when the tears were dried and the feel better ice cream sundaes were eaten, Kimmie had crawled from underneath her covers and pulled the box from her closet. She listened to the clicks and snap, put the little pink comb inside, and vowed never to forget her friend.

The next time was years later, when she should have been much too old for things like memory boxes, and inside she placed two hair clips.

Kim was now twelve and normally thought of the box only when she was cleaning her room, or when Nana would ask with a wink if she'd filled the box yet. It was stupid sitting there underneath her bed, covered in a shoebox, gathering dust. She _should_ have used it for something useful instead of keeping a silly old comb in it.

And yet, whenever she would drag it out with the intent of getting rid of it, something would stop her. It was important, even if it was just gathering dust. One day she would have something that really meant something to put inside.

On the school bus every day, twelve-year-old Kim sat behind a boy named Freddie Thomson. The sight of the back of his head everyday was enough to advance hundreds of doodles and combinations of her name and his in the back of her schoolbooks. Her best friend Ron didn't like him, said so often, and thought he kept a monkey as a pet.

Freddie noticed her one day after school and said he liked her hair when it was pulled back. From that day on Kim made a point to wear her hair pinned back with barrettes. One day, after social studies, young Freddie gave Kim her first kiss.

And later, when Kimberly Anne Thomson didn't sound quite so appealing and Ron could once again aim spitballs at the back of Freddie's head, Kim looked at those ugly barrettes and began to understand why she kept the box.

Inside she stored reminders of the things that she loved. First friend, first kiss. Two items in the box. Perhaps not the most exciting of all lives, but it was a start.

As the years passed, Kim never talked much about the keepsake box. Nana no longer teased her about it – almost as if she could detect the change in Kim – and her parents never mentioned it. Ron knew of it of course, but never once asked to see it or pushed to know what she kept inside. Somehow, through his thick inane Ronness, even he understood.

Kim came close to asking her mother if she had once had a box like that from Nana. Surely she had – maybe still did. Kim wondered (before the ickiness factor set in) if her mom had saved some trinket from when she and dad were young.

Presently, sixteen-year-old Kim Possible sat on her bedroom floor, back against her bed, and the shoebox next to her. She was still clad in a too short skirt and painful heels from earlier that evening when she and Ron had gone to the Middleton Dill Days parade.

It was late and quiet and stillness permeated the house. Only force of will kept Kim from falling asleep where she sat. A headache pounded behind her eyes and her entire body felt like it had just completed a couple of marathons in a row. Apparently living with bi-polar disorder for a day was a touch taxing on the body.

Events from the past twenty-four hours were still a little foggy in her mind, but there were some things she recalled with all too much clarity. She hoped that after many hours of sleep some of those more embarrassing moments would become foggy as well.

But she had something to do first. Something that could not wait until morning. Kim turned her attention to the object balanced on her lap. She slipped the old key into place and turned.

Click, click, snap.

She looked from the two items sitting inconspicuously in the pine box to the device in her hand. Ron had found it lying on the ground as the fireworks exploded overhead. With an almost sad grin, he had dropped it into her palm and called it a "souvenir of a mistake."

He probably expected her to throw it away, but she had a better place for it.

Kim gently placed the shattered moodulator inside the box and smiled. One object was a reminder of her first friend, another of her first love, and the final...well, that was a reminder of someone that was a little of both and something more.

During the long walk home, Ron had said simply, "Well, at least the fireworks were nice." She had laughed and just like that they chalked everything up to another one of their weird days. In the future she would tell Ron how sorry she was, how she was happy that it just wasn't in him to have taken advantage of her, and how it wasn't all the moodulator's fault. Until that day, however, she would settle for a peaceful walk home.

And nice fireworks, of course.

End


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